The Benson Farm and Ranch, just outside of Johnson City , TX , was the destination for VO’s latest adventure…Operation Kiowa Warrior! The subject this week was US Army Helicopter Pilot CW2 Pat Scrogin whose dream since moving to Texas was to shoot a Trophy Fallow Deer. Pat’s wife, Stephanie, played an instrumental part in this operation by packing all his gear for us and keeping the surprise adventure a secret from Pat for several months. Pat spent most of his days in the sandbox supporting ground troops from the air in his Kiowa. We thought it was only fitting to fly him out to the ranch in style in a Robinson R44 flown by the General Manager of the LBJ Ranch, Lyndon Nugent. Unfortunately Mother Nature had other plans and visibility never reached over 500 feet. We scrapped our initial plans and drove him out to the ranch instead. At this point, we still hadn’t let on to Pat where he was going or what he was doing. Lyndon simply explained to Pat that he was told to bring him to specific coordinates and that’s all he knew. As usual our sponsors stepped up to assist in honoring Pat. Sitka outfitted our guest again with the finest camo on the market, Silver Stag provided a beautiful knife and Love Hirt’s worked with Pat’s wife to come up with one of the most emotional Hero Crosses to date. Once we had Pat on the ranch and outfitted, we worked hard for several days stalking back and forth over this beautiful Texas hill country (some of these hills were mountains to us Texans) to find the trophy fallow that Pat deserved. This was an amazing experience for us all with an incredible hero and is an adventure which will stay with us forever!

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VO’s goal is to raise public awareness about the therapeutic effects that being in the outdoors actually has on the mental and physical disabilities of our country’s wounded men and women. We will also provide a platform for veterans to tell their own stories in their own words.